11 janvier 2010 (Day 133)
Boy was today a long day! I woke up at 4:30 so that I could get a ride with Jean Claude into Grenoble. He works there 100 day of the year as one of the engineering electrician kind of people. Now is company does a lot of stuff with nanotechnology. It seems pretty interesting and really smart (though he doesn’t work in the nanotech department). It was sad saying goodbye to Florence, but all good things must come to an end. Jean Claude and I had a nice drive to Grenoble. Because of the weather (it was ice, but clear) it took us around four or 5 hours to get there. I slept for a little bit, we talked some, listened to the radio, and I looked outside a lot. It is so beautiful! I really made a mistake in going to Nantes. The south is warmer, as are the people, and there are mountains. It doesn’t rain every day! I am missing out, oh well, too bad for me. There was snow everywhere and everything was covered. I have never seen pine trees so drenched in snow that they were drooping and sagging quite marvelously. It was all too picturesque. Jean Claude and I talked about this and that, just whatever subject came up. There was an interview of some stupid American author on the radio that made me laugh a lot. He spoke really slowly and the translator made him sound a lot less like an idiot. We stopped around 7 and got pain au raisin…it is shaped like a cinnamon roll but with the dough of a pain au chocolat or a croissant. It was really good. I had always thought that they looked nasty. Along the way JC told me about all the different mountains and his adventures climbing up them. We passed this awesome town called Sistern that is a citadel, or basically a giant fort.
I got dropped off at the gare in Grenoble and said goodbye to JC. It was so cute, he was so worried about my bag being too heavy, me getting lost, etc. so he told me to contact them so they know that they know that, “I’m not dead, you know.” He also gave me his cell phone number for if anything happened.
Not much happened. I went walking around Grenoble with my giant sack. I was going to go up to the Bastille, but the cool bubbles that take all the tourists up were closed. If I had been smarter, I probably would have had time to walk up, but I didn’t think about it until I had a little less than two hours before my train was *supposed to leave. I walked around, trying not to slip on slush and ice. I went into a couple of shops since everything is on sale. I looked at baby clothes for Ginny, but I didn’t see anything I loved. I bought some pants at C&A because they were 50% off, came with a belt (I need one) and fit better than any of the pants I’ve tried in the past decade. I liked Grenoble because I didn’t get looked at for wearing my awesome beanie (think the kind with the ear part that goes down that look Scandanavian) and my snowboarding coat because that is what some other people were wearing. The boys, from a glance, seem nicer and cuter than the ones in Nantes (perhaps because they are sporty). I think I went to every bakery as well, lol. I was going to take my time and have a sit down lunch, but I decided to get a mini-pizza for 1,50 from this cute older pizza man. I then got a baguette for the train ride home and a pastry called something of the alps. The lady said it had almonds in it. She lied. It had blueberries. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. It was basically a blueberry tart. I enjoyed it while I was stressing about missing my train to Nantes, which I did.
When it was time I went back to the gare and waited for my train. The people watching was superb. There were several classes of 9/10 year olds with their teachers. They were so fun to watch. Once they were gone I wrote letters. The train came late, left late, and got to Lyon late. We had to keep on stopping for safety reasons (no idea why, it wasn’t snowing) but practically all the other trains were en retard (late) as well. I wrote and stretched my eyelids for a little bit on the train. I was sitting by two pretty sweet sounding guys [eavesdropping]. Another man scared the bagebers out of me. He was 2 seats away and his foot stretched all the way to by my seat. I looked down and was like, “What the?!”(to myself) looked up, and he said hi. Lol. I got in line to get a different ticket since I missed my train (even though there was almost an hour layover!). I wasn’t too upset about it. There were lots of crazy mad people running around the gare. I wished the lady luck with all of them. I chillaxed and ate my baguette and some clementines while listening to The Eagles. I am now thoroughly convinced that The Eagles is the best “I am sitting in a train station with an overstuffed bag, the trains are late, and everyone is grumpy music.” And bless my heart. I started freaking out because I didn’t see my new train on the screen. It took me going up to one of platforms and back down to realize I was looking at an arrivals and not a departures board. Ha ha, I love me! I was just proud that I stayed calm and didn’t get lost in Grenoble (I decided to not depart far from the tram line which led back to the gare). I got on the right train, a TGV, aka 200 and some odd kilometers of speed and will be arriving in Nantes late.
